The Bottle
by Band4life15
Summary: This is a story that I had to write for school, in the style of Edgar Allen Poe, but turned out really well. Just read it, and don't think that it's exactly like one of Poe's dreary stories. Amara and her family always seemed normal, if but a little out there, but there's one thing she's always had to hide: the fact that her entire family is mentally insane. Rated T for violence.
1. Chapter 1

For many years, I have been caged here. Driven mad by those surround me, I look at these walls, crying, screaming, kicking, punching, trying to force the steel surrounding me to give way, to release me from its jaws of death. Though tomorrow, I will fall asleep for an eternity, as the doctors tell me solemnly, I feel the need –the necessity—to share my story, convince those near to me, or those who have experienced some of the same turn of events that I have, that what has happen to me was no of my personal doing, but an effect of what those around me did.

Over a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather was made a duke, one with many lands and a large yearly sum of money for him and his future children, along with the promise of future titles for them as well. Unfortunately, my grandfather, he died just before my father, his only son, was born, so the title was granted to one of my great-uncles, now deceased. With his then new-found riches, he bought our current house (though he had been renting it before that point), a beautiful, sweeping mansion, with dense forests full of game of all varieties, set on a gorgeous 30-acre plot, with very few neighbors. He was also set in his ways of keeping this power in his own bloodstream, not to be diluted by 'some foreigner,' in his own words. He married his favorite sister, and when he had kids and they grew up, he forced my grandfather, his eldest and a younger sibling to wed. He also instilled the value of keeping power in a solitary bloodline. Thus, when my father and his sister came of age, my grandfather stated in his will that they should be married. However, this 'small' action caused huge waves on the social scene, as both of my parents were among the most well-known bachelor/ettes in the late 1890's, my mother even more so than my father. She and her circle of friends were the most sought-after debutantes of the 19th century, both in their looks and personalities. My grandmama helped them with both aspects. Grandmama was a very old-fashioned woman, never learning how to drive a car, or use a phone. Mom, while she did have a phone installed, and voted occasionally when she finally could, never used said phone, or ever learned how to use it in the first place, and never even got near the driver's seat of a car. Thank goodness we have a chauffeur! Grandmama also taught my mom the value of frills, pink, and showing off her already abundant feminine side. Not a day went by, that I can remember, where Mother didn't wear some shade of pink or purple in her dress. But, again, it was a huge deal in common society when my parents were forced together and made to have children; myself and my brother.

I am the first born, escaping the effects of inbreeding that my poor brother wasn't not so fortunate to be freed from. He was born eight years after I was, and couldn't have been cuter. However, he had hemophilia, and some brain damage. My parents were perfectly attentive to me, but the switch must have flipped off for Charlie. They acted like they were oblivious to him, and more often than not left him to his own devices. They did go so far as to hire a nanny, but she only showed up at nighttime. In the end, I took on the role of Charlie's main caregiver, especially so when he bruised his knee, or scraped his finger, and I had to race around the mansion, or the castle, as it seemed to us back then, trying to find that one thing that would halt, or at the very least, pause the constant blood flow.

Less than a year after Charlie was born, my mother turned to the bottle to solve all of her 'problems,' and barely 2 years after that, my father tries to step in, again, during one of my mom's drunken rampages, but she ends up severely beating him, and he fled the property, never to be seen again for the next eight years. Charlie had run up into his bedroom, his refuge, when Mother knocked on the front door, somehow sensing that this fight wasn't going to end like the ones before. I trailed him up to his room, smushed into his closet, and ducked behind his dresser, sucking in absolutely everything in order to fit behind it. He was rocking back and forth, clutching, gripping, practically squeezing the life out – if there was ever any life to be squeezed out – of his favorite stuffed bear.

"I'm scared, sissy," his voice, small, childish, and high- pitched, emerged as a whisper from his small, frail body. "What if Mommy hurts Daddy?"

"Dad would never let Mom hurt him," I respond, in a whisper as well, straight up lying to his face, as he deserves to think his father is the greatest man in the world, or whatever other mental picture he has in his head, not the simpering coward I actually knew my father to be. In times like these, my brother needs to stay as sane as he possibly can, with as much help from me as he could ever want or need.

After my mother's rage quelled, and we picked up the pieces together, I told her about how frightened her little boy was of her, and advised that she uncover some sort of animal to give to him as an apology of sorts. I was hoping she would procure some sort of dog or another variety of tamed animal for him to play with, or, at the bare minimum, a new stuffed animal. Instead, in her own mad way, two days after the incident, she loads up my grandfather's old shotgun while I'm outside, pruning some old flowers. As I'm in the kitchen, just to start informing the servants about dinner preparations, she returns from the damp, dense woods, and walks, with a spring in her step, over to the industrial sized sink, and begins scrubbing the blood off of the pelt that she toted in with her. The blood begins to stream off fluidly, and white, matted fur peeps out under the blood and mud. She quickly flips it onto a nearby cutting board, grabs a knife, and strips it of its fur. Before leaving the spacious room, she gestures at the meat leftover and lets the cooks know, "I would like for you to serve this for dinner tonight. Please make sure, however, to fish out all of the bullets."

My increasingly more insane mother then sweeps out of the kitchen, ever the lady, even in her oldest, patched up dress. Gliding down hallways, I gap after her all the way up to Charlie's room (wondering in my head, _How can someone in such a disgusting dress hold herself in a way that looks like she's a queen in ermine?_ ), where she drives a nail through the baby blue wallpaper, and hangs the now distinguishable pelt, which I do believe to be a baby bunny pelt, by its tail.

"A dead baby bunny, mom? Hanging over his head, as he sleeps?! Why would Charlie ever want that?" I explode, feeling almost as if I'm the parent here, now, scolding the imbecile-acting child.

"You suggested it yourself," my mom spoke to the floor, a soft, inquisitive undertone running through her words, almost child-like in its context.

"I meant an actual animal." Trying to keep my anger inside me, I realize it's a fruitless attempt. "If you were a real mother, and not some shadow, you would notice the little things about Charlie and I, like this!" I slammed my hand down on his dresser, delivering my point, and whirled out of the room furiously. I thought I'd been clear, but the pelt stayed where it was, and I, the scared 11-year-old I was, having already fought with my mother once, was too scared to remove it myself, or ask her to do it. Thus, it stayed where it was, and Charlie began to visit my room, in fear, more and more often, sleeping in a makeshift bed on the floor of my soft-carpeted room. It was also beginning to cross my mind more and more frequently, that my mother was not the same person she was when it was just me scampering around the house.


	2. Chapter 2

One afternoon, a few years later, my mother strolled out of the house in her finest gown, the first time she worn one like it in ages, off to a close noble friend tea party. Exactly three hours later, Charlie and I were setting up some of his toy cars to play with in the wooden front hallway, when all of a sudden the door slams open, and my stone cold mother comes stumbling inside, dress torn, hair unraveled from her fancy updo that took four hours for her to get right, one slippered foot dragging a bare one behind it. _Did she lie about the party? Were they serving spiked beverages?_ My head races around itself, trying to formulate how she could have gotten so drunk at a simple garden party, while I'm physically doing everything I can to send Charlie up to his room, or any other place but this front hallway, so that he's safe, but he stands, transfixed, with his little head ever so slightly to the left, not moving, barely breathing, lost in some far off world in his mind. My mother, in her confused, drunken state, stumbled over to him, arms outstretched, as if to hug him, but he flinched away, ever so slightly. But that one tiny little flinch was enough to send my mother into a rage. She takes three little steps back to a delicate vase, screams, then picks it up and shatters it at his feet. Seven pieces, barely seen with the nude eye, fly into his hands, piercing them gently, and he peculiarly turns them, palms up, towards his sweet face. In his eyes, a switch flips, and he's no longer my sweet baby Charlie, but a rabid, vicious animal. With a snap of his neck, his head jolts up and locks eyes with my mother, and lunges at her, throwing his body weight on her and knocking her into the parlor, and begins beating her with his puny seven-year-old fists. Alarmed, my eyes progressively get wider and wider, and my feet begin to move, seemingly without command, out of the front hallway, and twist and turn throughout the depths of the house, up to Charlie's room. His nanny is gracefully moving around the room, cleaning up the day's toys, as she only arrived here a half hour ago. She glances up for a second, and I'm already right beside her, clamping down on her wrist and pulling out her out of Charlie's room, dragging her through various flights of stairs and hallways, explaining everything that's occurred, and by the time I return to the parlor, we are set and have some ideas on how to stop this. She peeks in the doorway tentatively, and I'm sure the servants in the kitchen can hear the sound of her jaw hitting the floor, so I decide to see for myself, and what I see astounds me.

The grand, fancy parlor, that was set up the way it was for seven generations, the exact one that was Mother's pride and joy, the one thing in this house that hadn't been disturbed by two children, a drunken mother, and a once here father, was gone. Priceless figurines carefully hand placed by my grandma: gone. Shattered on the floor that my mom and brother are currently rolling on. All of the flowery décor: trampled. And as far as I could tell, both my current family members had several injuries, caused by either each other or the glass or a culmination of both. Charlie's nanny and I, both of us shell-shocked, slowly turned our heads towards the other.

"We have to separate them, or my mother is going to rip enough skin off of him to make him bled to death," I whispered to her, for once not treating her as a servant or someone else below my station, but as an ally, an equal. Within the next 3 seconds, we finalized on one of our initial plans, and, in essence, charged in on them. Amy, the nanny, broke their grip on each other, and wrestled my mother to the ground, began trying to knock her out. I scooped up Charlie, thrashing around, and carried him out to the common living room, with its soft, non-glassed carpet. Laying him down, I, unhappily and very unladylike, sat on him stoutly to keep him from going anywhere, or even moving at all.

I screamed, "Charlie! Charlie! You have to wake up! Charlie! Please, come back!" over and over again. But It was like his mind had been taken from him, and all that was left was this animalistic sense of rage. My poor, sweet, baby brother, now this ravaging beast that would not stop punching and kicking and thrashing under me, and after a while, my body went limp from being stiff for so long, and Charlie was able to push me off of him. But he didn't stop there. He just kept punching and kicking me, while I started crying, and screaming, hoping against all hope that he would just stop and hear me, or a servant would come rescue me. But they never came, taking too close to heart the saying, "Don't interfere." I lost consciousness, but I couldn't hear anything from the parlor next door, and I could only hope that Charlie's nanny had found some method to knock my mother out, and would find me soon, before Charlie, my adorable baby brother, now a mad man, beat me to death.


	3. Chapter 3

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" With a jolt, and an almost guttural animal noise, my eyes flew open, and I start kicking and punching the singular person in the room and anything around her that I could reach, screaming, "My baby! My poor baby brother! Where is he? Where did you take him? Where is he?" just like a broken record, over and over again, until I go hoarse, and break down, sobbing. My rant continues in my head, endlessly. _Charlie… I can't lose him. He's the only one that I left that I still love. I can't lose him I can't lose him IcannotlosehimIcannotlosehim. Is he alive? Dead? Was he bleeding? I couldn't have hurt him while I was on top of him. Could I've? Did I? Oh, God, I did. I killed him. I killed Charlie. Oh god, I'm a murderer. Oh, God Oh, God Oh God Oh God OhGod OhGodOhGodOhGod charlie. Charlie!_

My eyes -no, the area around them- begin to hurt from my tears and sting painfully, and for the first time, I begin to actually assess myself and the surroundings. Bandage around my head. Possibly two black eyes, but definitely one around my right eye. My leg, bound and set. Deep, yet small, cuts running, scampering, up and down, left and right, chasing each other, my arms and legs. I was in a small cottage, dark and damp. Definitely not on our sprawling estate. And-there they are, two eyes peeping up from a chair across the room, that I had battered. _First Charlie, now her. I'm a monster. No, You're not. Yes I am. No, You're Not. Yes, I Am. No You're Not. Yes I Am. YES, I Am. NO, You're Not. YES I Am. NO You're Not. YES. I. AM. I beat Charlie, and now I've beat someone else._

"Where's Charlie?" I manage to choke out, amidst my numerous conflicting thoughts, at the matronly face that had come out from behind the chair, now staring down into my eyes.

"Don't worry, sweetie. Your brother's alive. He's just next door." The lips continue moving, speaking a foreign language now, but I can only focus on those four little words. _He's. Just. Next. Door._ I try to leap out of the bed, but discover a large, thick leather strap wrapped around me, holding me down to the bed, with a heavy, metal buckle resting just above my hips. In my delirious state, my fingers fumble seemingly endlessly, first with the sheets, then with the buckle itself, and I finally figured out the simple trick. The straps loosen, and I immediately spring up, disregarding the pains that ricochet up and down my leg, the leg I don't even know how became broken, and I'm confronted by the woman still speaking to me. With a gentle push from her, I stumble, and fall, right back into the very place where I just tried to escape from.

"Did you hear me?" I blatantly shook my head, not knowing what else to say or do. "I said, your brother is right next door, but he's not next door _in this house._ He's next door, in the police station." A chill swept through my body, suddenly and ferociously, even though this woman's house is well vented, it was summer, the window showed that we were in a large clearing of our woods, and I found out by closer examination, and as this lady had been talking, she'd been pushing me back in bed more firmly and layering the covers on top of me.

Shaking my head, my guard dropped and I gave into this woman's nurturing. It felt good, as it had been several years since my mother had touched me in any sort of way to be seen as caring and affectionate.

By that singular shake of my head, she sensed I didn't believe her. "It's true. After you passed out, your brother's nanny, Amy, managed to knock out your mother, immobilize your brother without making him bleed, -Yes, she told me what I needed to know to heal him, including how he's hemophilic- got to your telephone, and called the police." _Whoa. I need to give her a serious pay raise the next time I see her._ "When the police showed up, your nanny was laying by the telephone, and your brother had broken out of his bonds, and found your mother. He was beating her even more senseless than she already is. The police restrained him, and revived the nanny, and she told them the whole story, the same one I'm telling you right now, after the police told me this wild story. Unfortunately, because of this story, the police are now holding them both at the station," She finished her sentence with a grimace, scared of how I might respond to the news. I flinch, and duck my head, blinking back yet another wave of tears. "Don't worry, I am allowed to go over there and try to fix him up." Wrapping up her tale, and I took a deep breath at the end of her words. Not that I cared for my mother -if she died, I doubt I'd blink twice at the news- but I'm glad that Charlie is under the care of this old crone. I haven't known her for long, but I like her already.

"Charlie!" I ran towards my brother, exuberant that Julia, the woman who took care of us both after that dreadful fight, finally pronounced us healthy enough to see the other one.

"Mara!" We crashed into one another, and hug any part we can reach of each other. For him, my legs and stomach, and for me, every part of his distraught little body. "Mara, I'm so scared. Every day, these big men came and asked me questions about Mommy. But I didn't lie, I promise, sissy. Sissy?"

"Yes, Charlie?" I pull back slightly and look down, and I see trouble, trouble blooming on his scarred little face.

"What's a court hearing? The big man said that my mommy and I have one on Monday." I laid my hand gently on his head, and sighed. No seven-year-old should be asking that sort of question, especially not with that answer.

"Er, it's when a judge decides where you and Mom would benefit most from being placed." Unsure if I satisfied his question enough for him, I kneel down beside him, and roamed my eyes all over his dainty face, searching for an answer of my own. Fortunately, he didn't press any farther, and his face was wipe, right before my eyes, of any trouble or worry that he had.


	4. Chapter 4

The gavel decisively hits the sound block for the final time. So, that's it. My Charlie, the baby of the family, is off to some asylum. I break into tears, wondering why this was happening to a normal boy from Britain.

"Amara!" Both my mother and brother cry out at the same time from across the courtroom, both, apparently, wanting to talk to me before they leave for forever. Openly crying, with Charlie's old nanny and Julia by my side, now my court-appointed guardians, I chose to speak only Charlie's name across the room. However, once I run and break past the guards, I hug both of them goodbye, thinking that I will never see them ever again.

My mother's fingers dig into my back as she whispers, with the slightest twitch every few seconds, "I love you. Remember me. And chin up, dry your tears. You're the lady of our house now. Act like it." Then the guard's sticks suddenly appear in our hug and force us apart, dragging me back to my, now legal, guardians, waiting for me in the car, where I believe the officers had forced them into, after I broke away from the crowd.

"Come on, Amara," Julia speaks, a weary under tone, exasperated by my constant antics and actions to see my brother and make sure that he was cared for. I guess I don't have to do that anymore. "It's time to take you home."

Blinking back yet again more tears, I explode, "Well? What if I don't want to? What if my whole house reminds me of Charlie? What do I do then? What are you going to do with me when I do go mad, and I am going to go mad! What do we do then?" Practically screaming and crying at the same time, Amy climbs out of the front seat, and slides in the backseat with me. I fall, slowly, and rest my head on her lap, soaking part of her new dress in tears, while Julia starts the car up and carefully pulls out from in front of the courthouse. _Charlie. Even saying, thinking, his name hurts._ We pulled up to the front door, and just as I'd finished drying my tears from the last time, the butler came up, open the door and spoke one word. That one word sent me back into tears. "Oh, Charlie! My poor baby Charlie. Why? Why did you do this, God? Why?"

"Oh, sweetie. Come here," Amy started to try to scoop me up into her arms, but I beat her arms away, and pushed past them, running through the house, and out the kitchen, into the woods, thankfully dark and dense, never stopping until I reach a tree, the right tree, the only one that might make the slightest dent in my grief. I came to the spot that I looking for and unraveled the rope, neatly looped around a tiny hook that would retract the rope and the hook itself. Wrapping my hands around it, and in it, I leaped off the tree and free-falled, letting the rope guide me to a small platform, high in another tree, very easy to miss. No one would ever be able to trace me, or track me, if they preferred, from on the land below, or the greyish skies high above.

A series of platforms later, I swing onto the final tree's platform, which is based around a beautiful treehouse, and it had been awaiting a long put-off visit from me. My father built this for me when I was five, and I had only just showed it to Charlie a few weeks ago, so there isn't anything in here that could _really_ remind me of him. The three of us are the only ones in the whole world who know about it. Even if my guardians could find the treehouse from the ground below, there is no way to get up from the ground. Father sawed off all of the branches below, and the only way to get down is a rope ladder that once thrown down, retracts itself by crack in two minutes. Mother never knew about it because she never cared for the woods or dirt or anything, really, that wasn't pink and unbelievably elaborate or fancy. _Now, it's just me left to visit it,_ I think, barely able to stand up in it, but moving around on my knees to the small table, window, and other various areas in the 4' by 6' by 6' rectangle, thusly ruining one of my nicer dresses, or so my mom says, that I had to put on for court. Not that it matters now. I'm never going to see them, no, Charlie, ever again. Breaking down into crying again, I curl into a ball in the very center of my treasured treehouse, now the only one left who's going to remember it, or ever see it again.


	5. Chapter 5

"Please, Mr. Judge, sir," I gathered everything I had, focused it on one little point on me, and… let it all seep into the floor to try and look as desperate, weak, and feminine as I possibly could. "It's been eight years since my family was all under one roof, and four years since I've seen my mother and brother. Help me make the first step towards reuniting everyone. I promise, you couldn't find a safer house in all of London." Never mind how 'safe' it would be once my mother returned. As my final point to sway the judge, I turned shyly, glanced at Julia and Amy, then demurely peeked out at the judge beneath lowered lashes. "Please?"

The judge hesitated, then lowered his gavel to the block, letting the noise echo throughout the courtroom. Julia had taught me well, on one of the few occasions I could be coaxed from my room or the treehouse (which they eventually found), both places where I drove myself mad and confused every little detail about every little thing. In the last four years, this is my first trip outside my house -my room, in fact- that wasn't to or from my beloved treehouse.

Two pairs of arms encircle me, pulling me out of the past, and into the now. I had just convinced the judge to let me get my mother and baby brother out from that insane asylum where they were placed into four years ago. Thank goodness I'm now a legal adult, or I would have never made it past the first step of this process.

Julia and Amy guide me gently out of the courthouse, down the sweeping front steps, and out to the car. They are still living with me, although I'm 19, because I do, occasionally, break down, both physically and mentally. I have been living in the past every day for the last four years, alternating between plotting to get Charlie back, crying about how I lost him in the first place, and placing blame for who sent him there (It's always me). I have felt myself take more than a few steps towards the state the rest of my family is in now, but I know, no, hope, that seeing Charlie can unravel all of that damage I have done to myself. _I can only hope that they managed to keep my mother off the bottle and not addicted to something else,_ my first thought of my mother in years.

Stumbling out of the car a few days later, my mom collapses into my arms, and talking in nonsense gibberish, slurring just about every other word. Dragging her into the house, I literally dump her on the floor of the foyer and instruct a nearby butler to take her to her old chambers. Just as I fling open the doors to run out to Charlie, a bullet hits me, in the shape of an eleven-year-old boy. Simultaneously, we cry out each other's names and wrap our arms around the other. _He's gotten so much taller,_ I think, resting my chin on his head. Tearing up, and acting how I always thought our mother should, I pull out of the hug and look down in his face, searching for the boy I knew, doubts running through my head as often as I tried to quell them.

"What's for dinner, sissy?" Head tilted, and posing his question just like he used to, Charlie was the exact scared little boy that was forced away from me. We both laughed and I guided him inside. However, I did notice a glint in his eyes that all three of us now shared: that little sparkle that hinted that something wasn't completely right, no matter how hard we tried to act and be normal.

The next month passes by without incident, if you overlook my mother's obsessive drinking and the points where all of our pent-up insanity and anger at one another takes over our bodies. I turn a year old, and some idiot made the mistake of putting out several different bottles of wine.


	6. Chapter 6

As my social life is in the pits, due to my mother being 'away,' as I told all of our families' noble friends, and unable to introduce me to society, it was really just whoever was on our property at 4 o'clock that fateful afternoon of my birthday party. Servants, family, friends, and basically anyone else were all invited to take the day off. But my mom found that wine stash an imbecile put out, and downed several bottles in the kitchen before Charlie and I walked in, originally searching for some sweets to refill the platter. I started to back out of the room, trying to pull Charlie with me, thinking -no, hoping, praying- that I could save him from another attack, but he's once again transfixed by our mother's poor actions, and he allows her to pick up a drained bottle from beside her on her little counter space, navigate through the enormous area, and commit the unspeakable.

Seconds after the bottle makes contact, Charlie collapses into my arms, and lower him down to the floor, ever so gently, cradling him, crying over him, roaming my hands all over his head, doing everything I can to stanch the blood flow. As I'm screaming for someone, anyone, to help him, save him from the inevitable, Julia bursts into the room, and takes in everything. My distraughtness. Charlie's head, body, and the floor around the both of us, seeped in blood, both of our blood. My mother, writhing around on the floor, collecting more and more shards as she wriggles back to her collection. My loyal caregiver instantaneously sinks beside me, frozen, just beside the door, and tears off a long piece of her new dress, altered from my mom's musty, yet massive, closet, and encircles it around Charlie's bashed-in head. Julia then lifts him out of my arms, and carries him out of the room, leaving me free to do other things. I wish that I could do what my heart wanted me to do, which would be to go after one of my mom's bottles, and hit her over the head with it, giving her a taste of her own medicine, not listening to my head. Instead, I blindly follow Julia out of the room, after smashing the rest of the wine bottles, and I cast upon my mother a withering look.

Making the trek up to Charlie's childish bedroom, I, finding it barren of all humans, flee downstairs into the living room, where an emergency sick room had been set up. Charlie, my proud eleven-year-old, writhing around in pain from all of the different methods people are shouting to Julia to have her try, was the star of the room. I burst through the hub and dropped onto my knees beside him, and grabbed his limp, cold hand. Glancing around, I saw most of the guests had either left the grounds, or had gone back to their normal duties. Only a few that I had gone to in the past for medical help stayed behind and assisted Julia, though one was on the phone, I presume either dialing for another doctor, or calling her family to come and get her. Charlie gasps for air, and all of my attention goes back to him, pleading, hoping, begging, praying to any and all gods out there to keep him alive.


	7. Chapter 7

Dressed in full black, I turn to my mother and we begin to cry in each other's arms. She apparently forgot what she did, why we are here, mourning, while I hate myself even more for taking comfort and comforting this mad woman, this murderer. The last week was for private mourning, though I spent much of that time screaming at my mother and Julia; the former as to why she couldn't save him, the latter as to why she did it in the first place. Now, we mourn publicly, sending for the coroner, and holding a funeral, which is in three days' time. Hearing a car noisily rumble over the gravel and splash through yesterday's leftover rain puddles, I willingly, and quite gladly, extract myself from this hug, and dry my tears to inform this visitor that he is not welcome. Having our butler pull open the door to the gloomy outside world, I walk down the massive front steps as regally as I can in my grieving, mad state. The car's driver is already pulling the sleek black door open, and a tall, willowy man steps out of it in a tuxedo and top hat. Doffing his hat in my direction, he finally speaks in a deep, rumbling voice.

"Hello, Amara," With those two words, it finally dawns on me who exactly this man is.

"Daddy?" I don't know whether I should cry with joy, or run away in anger.

"Happy birthday," he begins to speak, but then takes in my dark cloths, my mother's covered face as she peeps out the door, and the back fabric draping over every window. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

"H-He's gone!" And the tears come once again. My father's face crumples, as there was only one 'he' in his life that really mattered.

"Who?" With that one question. My father's rage and anger over this news is released, and only his sadness is left.

By my hesitation to answer, he's given his answer: my mother, his wife, the very one who gave him that son in the first place. Dashing up the front steps, he takes off through the house, aiming for the phone, while I grab my mother and slowly track him through the house, explaining everything to her. I impress on her that she needs to do everything that I say, so that she doesn't have to go back to that asylum or to jail. Little does she know that the single reason I'm telling her all of this, trying to get her to play a part, the only reason why I have been doing anything for the past few days, is for Charlie and to avenge him. And if my mother is going to die, and die she will and must, I want to be the one to plunge the knife, to choke her, to shoot a bullet at her, see the blood spurt out, and watch her body fall to the ground, lifeless.

So, when the police do show up, I'm 'thankful' that she plays her part to perfection, covering up all of her oddities, the mad ramblings, odd thoughts and deeds, when any, and every, single servant in this house could say, with perfect clarity and the truth backing them up, that she is a complete goner.

After the police depart, 'thankfully' not with my mom, I scramble through the house, trying to find my father. Eventually, I remember that it wasn't just Charlie and I that knew about the treehouse, our father was the one who built it. Darting between trees, and up the correct one, I reach the treehouse and can see, through the window, my father, woefully sitting in the center of the box, crying. The planks creak beneath my feet, his head springs up, but then he lowers it in despair.

"I promise; I was just trying to help. I thought that would be what you wanted for sure."

"Not this time, Dad, but you should've been here for the last 9 years when I did actually need both you and your advice. The judge actually had to appoint two guardians for when Mom and Charlie went to the asylum, because nobody could find you, anywhere! So, yeah, DAD, you weren't here when you could have been, and should have been, making decisions like this, but because you forfeited that right when you WALKED OUT, I think I've gained enough authority over the years when you were absent, to say the least, to make that kind of choice for myself! At least, more authority than YOU have right now, and ever will!" Breathing heavily, my one hand gripping the window sill tightly, the other tired from waving around to emphasize my points, I'm glaring at my father, relieved that I finally said everything that I've wanted to say to him for the last decade. He finally raised his eyes, and I see a look of understanding as to why I kept my mother out of jail. He knows that I loved Charlie, and that I would want justice. With this look of recognition, he stands, sort of, and looks me square in the eye.

"Now that's the sort of fire a woman should have for her passion, and I'm glad my daughter has it."

My jaw hits the window sill.


	8. Chapter 8

Several years later, I'm stuck in my room, having one of my raving breakdowns, that now come so frequently, from the stress of keeping my mother together throughout all of the investigations the police are still holding. Father's out of the house, doing God knows what, and Mother ambles right past my bedroom door, clearly drunk and out of her senses. In my own messed up state of mind, yet so clear is my thought process, I'm up in a flash, and running out my door and down the hallway, catching up with that wretched woman I saved from jail, and finally, satisfyingly -oh, how I've waited for this exact moment- rest my hands on her shoulders, spinning her around to face me, then maneuvering my hands up and around her neck, then I cinch them there, so unprotected and vulnerable, so easy to snap. I can see it in her eyes, she knows what I'm about to do. I need to watch her final expressions. The first, a look of fear and surprise mixed together as to who this is. The second, a knowing of why I'm doing this blankets her face. Pushing her hands towards each other, I watch her face intently as she gasps her last, I see the light go out in her eyes, without a scream or a moan or any sort of noise, feel the weight of her lifeless body, being held up only by my hands, and I can't help but throw her to the ground with pleasure and I crack a smile, cackle even, in my own way.

Shortly after, I'm out in the woods, my mother's body carelessly thrown behind me as I plow through mixed layers of dirt, stones, and tree roots. I finally reach a stopping point, where I turn around, dropping the shovel beside me, and gleefully kick her into the ditch I've dug. Scooping up the shovel, I proceed to cover her up, not even bothering enough to mark the spot of forest where I placed her.

When Father stepped through that front door, he knew something was up when A) I was there to greet him, B) I was wearing a different dress, and I never change in the middle of the afternoon, C) I had a gleam in my eyes that wasn't there before, and D) the excuse I gave for Mother would have never been true in a million years.

"She's resting." Quick as a flash, my dad is bolting upstairs to the master suite, and throws open the doors. Finding the bed void of her, he turns around, and, finding me, grabs my shoulders and begins shaking me.

"What did you do to her?!" But he already knows. He's known what I have wanted to do to my mother for five years now, ever since I screamed at him for almost sending her to jail. My father knew I wanted revenge for Charlie, and he knew I was going to do it on my own time. That's why I let her stalk around this place, crowing to whoever would listen that she'd killed her own son and gotten away with it. I wanted her to be at her worst, drunk, rambling, full-on mad, because for all of us, the madness rises and falls. We are never at one peak point.

My father, after shaking me for some time, releases me, and I collapse, head bouncing off the floor, eyes tracking him down the hallway. I then find my legs and get up, following him to the phone, where I'm certain he's heading. Downstairs, he's already phoned the police and, once I arrive, he commands one of the servants to hold me down, as he runs out the back door, I presume to look for her body, or a mound of some sort.

Hours later, I'm being fitted for a straitjacket of my own, my father's testifying for the police somewhere, my mother's being given an autopsy, and I'm thinking that I should have killed her differently. My court hearing and subsequent trial are being overlooked, as the police know by now that madness runs in our blood quite fluidly, thus I'm automatically a new 'member' of the Rampton Secure Hospital, the exact same one Charlie and my mother stayed at, back when he was alive. At the thought of Charlie, I burst into tears and start shaking, earning me a dozen more pricks from the nurses, who already have a hard enough time trying to get me into this accursed jacket, make it as uncomfortable as possible, and force me into that tiny, damp, stinking cell I know is next for me on their to-do list. After my father had called the police earlier, I knew that he had just snipped the fraying rope of trust and confidentiality we'd manage to weave back together over the last five years. I knew, then and there, even before the police came, that I was never going to see anyone I loved for the rest of my life.


	9. Chapter 9

**Here it is, the thrilling conclusion to this story that absolutely no one has read. Enjoy, nobody.**

Now, the doctors are coming for me, just as I dash out these last few words. They say it will be painless, but I will not hand over my death time to some stranger. I need to be in control for that final detail of my life.

Hopefully, my nurse, my friend, actually, will look through my meager possessions before tossing them on the local burn pile. I want him to read it, to live it, to understand the circumstances of how we first met. But I'm not allowed to talk to him, see him, before I'm stripped of everything. I will miss this life, as awful as it was to me, yet at the same time, I welcome Death, mighty as he is, to take me now, before they force him to come. My only regret is that I am the last of my bloodline, sick and twisted it was, it was still mine, and noble it was.


End file.
